


Contact

by Sunshine18



Series: Flaws [1]
Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Discussion of Past Abuse, F/F, Marceline/Ash (over), Memory of a Memory, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:50:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine18/pseuds/Sunshine18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night after "Memory of a Memory," Princess Bubblegum gets a phone call, because these stories don't end once Finn and Jake have their laugh and swan out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contact

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic! This takes place right after "Memory of a Memory." It's not strictly in-universe, because at that point in the canon timeline, PB is still 13. I've elected to ignore that fact in favor of her being 18/actually800whatever, as elsewhere in the series.  
> So: content warning for some discussion (not detailed) of an abusive relationship, and portrayal of some of the mental aftereffects of same. This isn't so much femslash as it is post-slash.  
> Thanks to kla1991 and Phoenixash for their help in getting my rough ideas turned into what you see before you. Couldn't have done it without you.

Princess Bubblegum woke to the sound of her phone. She pulled it into the bed with her and snapped it open without looking at the caller ID. Most likely Finn, she thought muzzily; anyone from inside the palace would have just come and knocked on her door.

 _"Was wollen Sie?"_ she groaned. "It's two o'clock in the morning, dude."

"Bonni?" The voice on the other end was Marceline's. Bubblegum frowned into her phone.

"Marceline? Why the cabbage-?”

"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry. I, uh, I couldn't sleep. Can't sleep. And I was hoping…" Marceline's voice wavered, trailed off.

Bubblegum sat up in bed, scrubbed a hand across her eyes, and yawned. This was odd. Marceline had never been the type for late-night I-miss-you calls. A few decades into the breakup was a strange time to start.

On the other end, Marceline mustered her courage. "I was hoping maybe you could come over? …Bonni? Are you there?"

"I'm here," Bubblegum said. "What is this, Marceline? Are you drunk?"

"No!" Marcy — Marceline — snapped. Bubblegum half-hoped she'd made her mad enough to just hang up. She'd been up for forty-eight hours working on zanoit research, and the next day she had to jury the Mushroomopolis Science Festival. _Ugh,_ she thought. _I should be asleep, not dealing with suddenly sentimental exes._

Misinterpreting her silence, Marceline insisted, "I'm _not_ drunk. Glob, you're such a jerk. It's just, um, Ash showed up at my place today." Oh. Oh dear. "And it kind of really sucked, and I don't know where he went after I escaped, so—"

"Escaped?" Bubblegum jumped out of bed and started fumbling for her clothes. Wouldn't do to arrive in the t-shirt, might give her the wrong idea, and anyway, bad timing. "Marcy, did he hurt you?" Where the nuts were her pants?

"It's fine, I mean, Finn and Jake saved me, and we kicked his head in and stuff." Bubblegum noted that _it's fine_ was not the same as _no,_ and asked her next question as gently as she could.

"Should we call them? They'd make better guards than me."

"No, that — that won't work. Look, are you going to come over or not?"

Even sixty-odd years after leaving him, Marceline had hated the mere mention of Ash. She'd explained a little, in terse tones, when Bubblegum had needled her about her previous relationships, but she had never been willing to delve into the details of why things had gone bad, or how she had finally been able to leave him.

 _And even without knowing that,_ Bubblegum thought as she pulled on her clothes, _how many times have I wished for the security of company after a kidnapping?_ Finn and Jake came through with the rescue every time, but no matter how routine it had become, in the aftermath of such events, Finn was always more her knight than her friend. And there was humiliation in needing, let alone asking, a thirteen year-old boy and his dog/brother to be her safety.

"Yeah," she told Marceline. "Hang tight, I'll be right over."

 

  
  
Marceline met Bubblegum at the front door and locked it behind her. Bubblegum looked her up and down. Physically, she was unscathed. Her posture, well, that had always been terrible, but she was hovering too close to the ground, and she wouldn't quite look Bubblegum in the eye.

"Thanks," she said. "For. Yeah."

"Of course," Bubblegum responded brightly, as if this was a perfectly normal visit, at a normal hour, for normal reasons. Not that those happened. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, I guess."

Despite that she had pled for her presence, once Bubblegum was inside and seated on the stony couch, Marceline commenced ignoring her. She floated off into the kitchen and began opening and closing cupboards at random, as if she just needed something to do. Marceline, Bubblegum knew, hated to be pried at, even by a friend, and Bubblegum wasn't exactly that. So she sat, concerned but quiet, fizzing with unasked questions. Just as she was beginning to despair of the couch and contemplate sitting on the floor, Marceline spoke up from behind a cupboard door.

"He tricked Finn and Jake into stealing one of my memories. The one from when I broke up with him."

"Memory core manipulation?" Bubblegum reeled. Memory core manipulation was something she had outlawed in the Candy Kingdom as soon as she'd found a wizard willing to explain it to her. She still didn't understand the science of it, but in essence, Ash had reached inside Marceline's head, right where she lived, and decided the shape of her didn't suit him. He'd removed a piece of her foundation and given her a stir, as if a person was a mixture he could dilute and strain without consequence.

Bubblegum knew better than anyone in Ooo how synaptical repetition formed pathways of memory, and memory gave shape to the conscious being of a person, what the superstitious called the soul. It was _wrong,_ it was so wrong, that a set of metaphors for physics and chemistry masquerading as "magic" could excise parts of that, and that anyone with a claim to the word _lover_ would ever use science that way. Bubblegum found that she was digging her fingers into the cushions of the rock-couch hard enough to actually make dents, her knuckles white and straining. Marceline, and the mind, and science — Ash had meddled with three sacrosanct things today. Whatever else she had and hadn't been told about him, all Bubblegum needed to know now was that he was _poison,_ a cancer, and she would burn him from Marceline's life, sterilize this all—

Miles away, in the kitchen, Bubblegum realized, Marceline had continued talking, her voice carefully conversational, in sharp contrast to the maelstrom in Bubblegum's head.

"…with some kind of sleep spell," Marceline said, and Bubblegum blinked and remembered that she was in a civilized house. This was not the time or place for mad science wrath; her feelings about Ash were not the priority, were neither needed nor effective. This was not a battle, and if it had been, it wouldn't have been hers. _Reorient, Princess. This is no time to fray._

"It wasn't really their fault," Marceline continued from around the corner, still ignorant of Bubblegum's small, silent drama in the living room. Bubblegum slowly loosened her hands, stretched out the tension in her jaw, and packed away her helpless rage. It was not what Marceline needed.

"I don't suppose you'd ever told them about him," Bubblegum remarked in a passable imitation of an even tone.

"No, so they couldn't have known. But I still don't want them around for a while."

Bubblegum stood, smoothed her clothes down, crossed to the kitchen, and gently closed the cupboard so that she could see Marceline properly. "That's perfectly reasonable," she said in a tone measured to comfort.

Marceline, who had never conformed to Bubblegum's measurements, twisted up her face and said rudely, "Yeah, I know it is. Don't patronize me, Princess."

She never could just accept support. But she was upset, it was okay, Bubblegum needed to cut her some slack. Her reply still grated a little coming out. "I'm not patronizing you, Marceline, I'm trying to be helpful."

"Never been your strong suit, Bonni dear."

"Then why call me?" Bubblegum stepped back, palms up, a conscious nonthreat display. They'd spent years snapping at one another, and it was easy and familiar, but she was over it, so far done she'd come out the other side and found simple, tired honesty instead. She had a kingdom to rule, and Marceline had her own things, this included, and the hurts they had done each other just weren't all that important anymore in the scheme of things. So: "Why me, Marceline?"

She watched Marceline weigh answers, gave her a minute and took the time to muscle down the last adrenaline tremors in her system. No good in Marceline picking up on them and thinking Bubblegum was angry at her, not when it had at last stopped being true.

Marceline at length seemed to decide that she wanted a friend more than a target, and she too let her shoulders fall, and smiled from one side of her mouth. Her fangs seemed smaller than they had been seconds ago.

"Who else, Bonni?" she answered, and continued before Bubblegum could mistake this for romance, "Finn and Jake were out. Simon? He's even worse than you with the emotional support stuff, and anyway, he'd have gotten the wrong idea. You know how he is with hugging and junk."

"Not exactly Mr. Sensitivity," Bubblegum agreed with an answering smile, and teased, "Does that mean you want hugging and junk?"

"Hugging, maybe," Marceline shot back. "You should probably keep your junk to yourself." Bubblegum felt herself go crimson; Marceline cackled.

"Oh my glob, you know that's not what I — you are so _distasteful."_

"You walked right into it! It would have been a crime to pass that one up—"

"You know what's a crime, sexually harassing the sovereign of the Candy Kingdom is a crime—"

"Ooooh." Marceline waggled her eyebrows. "Are you going to send me to your _dungeon?"_

Bubblegum covered her face in her hands. "You win, I'm done."

"Wimp," Marceline hissed, but she grinned as she said it, and floated a little higher in her triumph. Bubblegum smiled up at her through her fingers.

Something creaked outside, and Marceline collapsed inward in a heartbeat, literally became smaller as she flinched from the wind or footstep that had just shifted her porch. Her ears went huge and batlike. Bubblegum, too, listened intently in the wake of the moment. She heard nothing more. Slowly, she reached over and squeezed Marceline's hand.

"I'll go see," she murmured. Marceline looked at her wide-eyed, wavering between fangs and soft fur, small shivering and the one whose fight this was. "It's okay, Marcy," Bubblegum reassured her. "I'll just take a look, you stay here." Marceline nodded tightly, once.

"He can walk through walls," she whispered.

"Good to know. Invisibility?"

"No."

"Thank you."

Bubblegum had a particle ray in her back pocket, but for all that she had been ready to kill Ash a few minutes before, she was afraid as she crept across the floor, because Marceline was afraid, and Marceline was a five-story horror with teeth the size of most people's arms, on her better days. Bubblegum knew that there were different kinds of strength and vulnerability, and that Ash was dangerous to Marceline in a particular way because of who they had been together, and how he was willing to exploit that. She knew he had no such hold on her. But she was afraid.

She reached the far wall and crouched against the door. She drew the gun.

"What is that?" Marceline hissed from the kitchen.

"I'm not much good with a sword," Bubblegum whispered back. "Ssh." She rose up a little on her haunches, and tried to crane her head to peek out the window.

"You can't kill him! Bonni! Bonni, put that away!"

Nothing in her sliver of a view. Bubblegum sank back down and looked to Marceline. She hadn't moved, but had sprouted black bristling fur along her arms and shoulders, distraught.

"It wouldn't kill him, Marcy," she soothed. "Of course I'm not going to kill him." Fury aside, Bubblegum was not confident of her resolve when it came to mortal single combat. She had spent centuries defending herself and her kingdom, and she would defend Marceline now, but she found that if one understood leverage — physical, psychological, political — killing was almost never necessary or practical. And aside from personal distaste, there was another data point: those long abused tended to feel protective of the ones who had hurt them. Marcy didn't need any more anxiety than she was already feeling, and Bubblegum really didn't need to risk a throwdown with the Vampire Queen, however scant the chance of that might be.

"Talk to me, Marcy," she murmured as she raised her head to look again. "Tell me about what your week was like before this. Did you have that movie night Finn was talking about?"

"Yeah," Marceline said. Bubblegum saw nothing out the window, just moonlit cave walls and the front yard. "Yeah, that was okay. The movie was kind of dumb." The oversized mushrooms lining Marceline's fence swayed a little. Perhaps a sixty percent chance that that breeze was strong enough to make the porch creak. Not, Bubblegum thought, a fantastic degree of certainty.

"Yeah? What did you watch?"

"Just something they found buried in the sand wastes. It was a romantic comedy, I guess? The subtitles, they, they weren't very well translated." She sounded the barest bit calmer.

"That's a shame," Bubblegum said, straightening all the way up. "Okay, I'm going to step outside for just a second, alright? I don't think there's anyone out there, but I want to be sure."

"O-okay."

"Okay. Back in just a minute." She unbolted the door, quickly stepped outside, and closed it behind herself. The porch light came on in response to her movement. She squinted past its glare into the darkness, holding her gun ready. The only sound that met her was wind moaning through the caverns; the only feeling the chill in the air. No sense of eyes on her, not that that was a strictly empirical sort of evidence. Bubblegum took a few steps forward. _If only the light wasn't ruining my night vision,_ she thought. _The light. The light came on._

She jumped down from the porch and went to stand in the furthest corner of the yard, then held very still. After a minute, the light went off. Bubblegum shifted in place; the light came on. She repeated the experiment from the other corner of the yard, then from a spot far off to the side, with growing relief. Each time, the light sensed her. It hadn't come on before she had stepped outside. She returned to the porch and slipped back inside.

"Nothing," she announced as she stepped through the door. "There's no one out there, and if anyone comes up, your porch light will warn us."

"You're sure?"

"Yup." Bubblegum slumped onto the couch and put her gun aside. "Yup, and I'm super smart, so you can be sure, too."

"You are super smart," Marceline rasped.

"And you're super safe," Bubblegum responded. She raised her head; Marceline still hung in the air at the corner of the kitchen entrance, looking as if she might fly apart at any second. "Oh, Marcy," Bubblegum breathed. "Come sit down. It's okay now."

Marceline crossed the room and hovered by the corner of the couch. Bubblegum opened her arms so that her lap was clear, offering.

"Can I be a bat?" Marceline asked quietly. "I know it's kind of gross, but I just need to—"

"There's nothing gross about it," Bubblegum interrupted, fervently regretting every time she had ever told Marceline to stop shedding on her sheets. "You do what you need."

Marceline sniffed, nodded, and suddenly was small and furred. She curled up in Bubblegum's lap, and Bubblegum petted her. She shivered a little under Bubblegum's hand.

"Ash always hated it," she muttered, "when I turned into ugly things. We had rules about it."

Bubblegum clenched her teeth around a mouthful of loathing and tried to find what to say. It wasn't that Marceline's monstrous forms weren't ugly. It wasn't that Marceline was always the same and beautiful underneath her various skins; she wasn't. Maybe that was the point.

"I've always admired," Bubblegum hazarded, "how fluid your external form is, how you use your transformative powers."

"I put them on to scare people," Marceline said.

"Yes, when you're teasing, or to protect yourself. But mostly, I've observed — I mean, tell me if I'm wrong, but my hypothesis is that your transformations are for the most part very honest, not artificial at all. You express how you're feeling with — with size and teeth and fur, as much as you use your face and your clothes like the rest of us. You're protean, that's all."

Marceline was silent for a while and Bubblegum began to worry that she had misstepped. Then Marceline asked, warily, "What does 'protean' mean?"

Bubblegum smiled and stroked her between her wings. "That you're changing all the time. That the way you use, or inhabit, your powers is more important than the fact that they're not pretty. If being a bat helps you to feel safe, or — or whatever you want to feel, then that matters a bazillion times more than whether or not anyone else thinks bats are sexy. Especially a donkhead like Ash."

"Oh," said Marceline, and then she was crying. Bubblegum held her close, and _sssh_ -ed and _it'll be okay-_ ed, and this seemed to be all Marceline needed in the moment. Privately, Bubblegum catalogued the odd experience of cradling a small more-or-less mammal, who had once been her girlfriend, while she cried for the lover who had preceded Bubblegum herself. It wasn't that she minded, but she wouldn't have anticipated it, either.

When at last Marceline fell quiet, Bubblegum continued petting her, and Marcy offered no complaint. With the immediate problem resolved, Bubblegum found herself lulled by the softness and repetitive motion of her own hands in Marceline's fur. The small movements of Marceline's breath became hypnotic; the discomfort of the couch faded to the back of Bubblegum's awareness.

 _Someone has to watch the door,_ Bubblegum told herself. It was her last thought for a while.

 

  
  
Bubblegum came around when Marceline shifted off of her lap to sit beside her, person-shaped again, and spoke.

"I do know, y'know, with my head—"

"Rationally," Bubblegum supplied, not quite awake enough to hold back the correctional impulse. How long had she been out? Marceline shot her a look of irritation. Bubblegum straightened in her seat and shook off sleep.

"I know _with my head,"_ Marceline said, "that he's probably not going to come back anytime soon. Maybe ever, after the butt-kicking we gave him. I'm probably not worth it to him after that."

"Hopefully not," Bubblegum agreed, then winced at her own insensitivity. It just came out like that sometimes, she was working on it — but Marceline was long accustomed to it and only twisted a wrung-out smile at her.

"You know," she said, "even after he'd gotten me back, back so I lo— so I liked him again, he didn't say, like, _I missed you,_ or even _glad to see you._ It was just _let's go back to my place, this kitchen's a little dirty, don't you think, hey, I'm getting hungry."_ Marceline laughed, short and sharp and high. "I think maybe he just kidnapped me out of, like, laziness. Because his house was messy. He always would do the craziest things to get out of work. So, so I think that was all he wanted, someone to cook and clean and… and keep him company. And I was like his old default, and he's a lazy buttwad, so. With all that magic spent, and just for those reasons, and then getting his pieces handed to him, it probably raised the price tag too high. And I'm not worth it anymore. If those were his reasons." She sounded, Bubblegum noted with concern, almost sad.

"Marceline," she ventured. "If Ash showed up here again, tonight, tomorrow, whenever, that would not be evidence that he loves y—"

"I know that!" Marceline snapped. "I know. With my head." She slumped, letting her hair fall in chaos around her face. "I'm not an _idiot,_ Bonni, I know what's good for me. And it's not him."

"I'm sorry." Bubblegum stroked a hand down her back. "I know you do."

Marceline sneered, unappeased. "I didn't have you coaching me when I broke up with him, did I?"

"No, that was all you."

"Flippin' straight it was. I know how to take care of myself. But," she swallowed, and buried her face in Bubblegum's shoulder. "I'm all messed up, Bonni. I shouldn't be confused, and I shouldn't feel bad that he's gone, or like I wasn't good enough for him. I shouldn't feel guilty for breaking his rules. I shouldn't let him mess with my head like this at all. But I can't make it stop."

"That's normal," Bubblegum said. "Common among people who have been through what you've been through. It's okay, to feel those things." Marceline huffed into the hollow of Bubblegum's neck and shoulder, breath snotty and warm.

"No, Princess. It's not. Just this once, trust me more than your books about something."

Bubblegum threaded her fingers through Marceline's hair and kept quiet. Apparently this was not good enough.

"I'm not some stupid textbook victim, Bonni."

"I know you're not," Bubblegum soothed. "I'm just saying, maybe if you'd pick up a few books on abuse you'd see that you're not alone in—"

Marceline raised her head to glare. "I didn't think I was alone, I thought I was with you. And I thought you were here with me, not off in the lumping library you've got between your ears, reading _studies_ about my _condition."_

It would be very nice, Bubblegum thought uncharitably, if Marceline would consider statements for even just ten seconds before coming up with theories about how they had been intended to insult her. Ever.

"I am trying to help," she said aloud. "Please, let's not do this." She extricated her hand from Marceline's hair and rubbed at her own face. "It's very, very late, and I'm tired, and not at my best. You've had an even more difficult day, and the person who did it to you isn't here, so you're venting your aggression on me. I understand and sympathize with transference urges, but please—"

"Would you stop psychoanalyzing me?"

That did it. "Would you stop interrupting me?" Bubblegum snapped.

"Sure, right after you stop using big words to put me in my place! I'm allowed to be angry at you, Bonni, and it's because you're full of it, not because I can't tell the lumping difference between my various sucky exes."

Bubblegum went still. "Do not compare me to him."

At the cold in her voice, Marceline too halted, stuck in midair over the arm of the couch. Her face twitched with what might have been the smallest hair of regret. "I wasn't — I didn't mean that you're — ugh, whatever." And with this most graceful of conclusions, she vanished up the trapdoor that led to her bedroom.

Bubblegum snatched a throw pillow up and buried her scream of frustration in it. She threw it across the room at Marceline's amp; she punched the couch. Then she cradled her hand and decided that her outburst was over.

 _How dare she?_ Bubblegum thought. _Here I am in the middle of the night, doing my best to help, and she goes and compares me to — and I'm certainly not here for_ my _health, no — and —_

Her fume was interrupted by a roar and a crash from upstairs and, a moment later, a furious cry of "Ow! Glob _dang_ it!"

Quiet fell again. Bubblegum glanced to the door; no light. Good. Marceline was merely being as stupid as she herself had been, in that case. She cracked a smile at this.

Glob, and it was stupid, wasn't it? Marceline obviously hadn't meant to draw the  parallel between Bubblegum and Ash which Bubblegum had heard.

 _And I totally had my science voice on._ Bubblegum grimaced. _Well, it comes out when I'm tired, she knows that. It's perfectly natural to fall into one's most comfortable register of speech when one is under the duress of exhaustion._

But Marceline was exhausted too, and didn't see love in science the way Bubblegum did. All right. _So I owe an apology._

Still, resentment clung. Marceline, Bubblegum thought, had been equally thoughtless, and had stormed off like a child instead of apologizing when Bubblegum had called her on it. So much for growing up and moving on.

But this wasn't entirely fair either, Bubblegum forced herself to admit. This breathing room was all the apology she was going to get, but it likely was well-meant. Marceline fought and forgave more easily than Bubblegum herself, and always had. It had taken her some time to learn that Bubblegum was not capable of putting away her anger the moment harsh words ceased. So she had started giving Bubblegum time to lick her wounds, after their yelling matches, and Bubblegum had worked on discarding small resentments instead of merely burying them. It hadn't, in the end, been enough. But it was an alright gesture right now, and at least it excused Bubblegum too from having to make an apology. They could just smooth all of this over and move on.

Fair enough. Picking back up, then— "Marceline?" Bubblegum called up the ladder.

"Yeah?" She sounded calm, at least.

"You okay? What are you doing up there?"

"Yeah, I broke a lamp, it's fine. Just don't step in it."

Bubblegum interpreted this as an invitation to come up. She pocketed her particle ray and started up the ladder.

"I'm just giving myself a haircut," Marceline added.

What?

Bubblegum poked her head up through the trapdoor. A lamp that looked like it had come from Marceline's bedside table lay shattered in the middle of the floor. Marceline was not present, but a door to Bubblegum's left — bathroom? — was ajar. She clambered up through the trapdoor and stepped around the lamp to push the door open.

"Hey," Marceline greeted her. She had a pair of electric clippers in hand, and floated in front of the vanity with a speculative look on her face, examining herself in the mirror — which, Bubblegum noted, she shouldn't be able to do. How strange.

"Hey," Bubblegum answered.

"So," said Marceline. "Uh, I'm sorry about what I said. I feel better now, so you were probably right about me needing to vent all over somebody. Thanks for playing target." She shot Bubblegum a look that was almost shy.

"You have a reflection," Bubblegum said, stiff and proud and too unprepared for a real apology to trade one in return or even accept it gracefully. _Who was it that's failing to grow up and move on, Princess?_ she thought. In the mirror, she saw a curl of disappointment at the corner of Marceline's mouth, but too late, too late, smooth over and move on.

"It's special," Marceline said, meaning the mirror. "Every now and then my dad does something kinda cool." She turned her attention back to the mirror and flicked on the clippers. Their surprisingly loud hum filled the silence.

One half of Bubblegum wanted to ask Marceline a dozen questions, about the mirror, about whether she couldn't just transform her hair down to the length she wanted, about whether she would ever agree to come to the lab to donate a few samples. The other half wanted to advise Marceline that she might want to put away sharp implements until a calmer day. Both needed to go drown. Bubblegum sat on the edge of the bathtub and held her tongue.

Marceline touched the clippers to her temple and a three foot-long rope of hair fell away. Bubblegum eyed her dubiously, but stayed quiet. For a while, they kept their separate peaces. Bubblegum allowed her mind to drift back to the zanoit research she had spent the last two days on, to check figures and review.

Then, out of nowhere, Marceline _snarled,_ low and mean: "Try to ruffle my hair now, doglord."

Bubblegum jerked, every nerve screaming _predator._ "Me?" she blurted.

Marceline's eyes flicked to her in the mirror. "No, not you. Geez." Without looking, she took off another swathe of hair.

Oh. Oh, yes. Because Bubblegum was not Marceline's only, not even Marceline's biggest, antagonist today. Bubblegum breathed on a six count until her heart rate settled and renewed her observation of Marceline. She'd taken off an enormous amount of hair; it was puddling under her feet, huge and black and faintly disturbing. Where it had been, there was only the faintest stubble, and Marceline's almost-white scalp, which was a few shades off of the rest of her. Bubblegum remembered, fondly, that her first reaction to getting Marceline's clothes off had been delight at the discovery that vampiric skin did darken as a result of exposure to indirect sources of UV radiation. Her scientific excitement had been so great that she had completely forgotten the original purpose behind her removal of Marceline's shirt. Marceline had been amused, then, not defensive, not annoyed.

She shook off the memory. That was a different time. Tonight, Marceline was not fond or amused, but pale from crying. Without hair on one side, the lines of her body seemed sharp enough to cut, even under a lumpy sweater.

"Are you doing okay?" Bubblegum asked.

"I feel like ripping someone to bits," Marceline answered, "but, yeah. Mostly." She _bvrrrrrm_ -ed off another lock.

"That's good," Bubblegum said weakly.

"I could. I could do that."

"I know you could."

"Ash is a flippin' weenie, Bonni, he'd have nothing on me in a fair fight. But he doesn't fight fair, y'know?"

Her hands shook, making the trimmed hair patchy and chopped-looking. Bubblegum considered for a second taking the clippers from her. She wanted very much to smooth Marceline's hair back and do this one little thing for her, to give her one more moment of care and security, things that Marceline had never had enough of. She thought, however, that this was probably a moment in which the action was more important to Marcy than the result. Bubblegum had been practicing interpreting such moments, had been learning the formulas for when her friends needed her quiet presence more than her urge to _fix._ She had already messed that up enough tonight.

"He had me, Bonni," said Marceline. "He almost really had me today, and I was right back to the person I was a hundred years ago. I didn't even know enough to — to kick him in the cannoli. To do anything except smile and make his dinner."

A small, belated sense of revelation at this: in all the years Bubblegum had known Marceline, Marceline had been aggressively undomestic, to the point where she forwent a thousand flavors of red simply because she refused to cook anything, ever. Bubblegum had always thought that she was simply stubborn, and perhaps lazy, although laziness was not something Marceline had ever been given to in other areas of life.

"He's not going to have you, Marcy," Bubblegum promised. "Not while your friends breathe."

"No," Marceline agreed. She set the clippers down, seemingly finished with her hair. She had shaved only half of her head; the line of contrast was uneven and sharp and shocking. "Not while I breathe, either," she said. "Or — well, you know what I mean." She bared her teeth in the mirror, wolfish, albeit not actually furred at the moment.

"I'm not his pretty girl anymore."

"No," Bubblegum said. "You're not." Something twisted between her lungs and, a little breathless, she took a mental step back and reminded herself that Marceline was not _hers_ either, not her anything girl, not anymore. And there were good reasons for that.

"Alright, I'm gonna shower off the little pieces," Marceline said, ever willing to let the profound and the pedestrian mingle without pause. She casually began to strip.

Bubblegum, with great effort, put up an equally casual expression. "Can I hang out on your bed while you do that? I don't think I can face your couch again."

"What's wrong with my couch?" Marceline asked from somewhere inside her sweater.

"It's super hard, Marcy. Like, painful to sit on."

"Oh. Huh. Yeah, I keep forgetting about that." She emerged from the sweater and tossed it on the floor. Bubblegum studiously did not avert her eyes at the sight of Marceline's shirt rumpled and rucked-up around her torso. If she showed any amount of fluster, Marceline would notice, and she'd never hear the end of it.

"Yeah, go ahead and sit on the bed, then," Marceline said. "The couch up here probably isn't better." Bubblegum slipped out of the bathroom and heaved a sigh of relief, which, actually, Marceline could probably hear. And she was blushing. Nuts.

 _Observation,_ she thought. _You are experiencing redoubled attraction to your ex-girlfriend. Hypothesis: this will subside given adequate rest and a review of all the reasons why it's dumb, in that order. Recommendations: test and proceed. In the mean time, maintain some flipping dignity, you donk._

She perched on one corner of the bed and closed her eyes. Shower sounds started up in the next room; it made for pleasant white noise, as long as one didn’t dwell on the near-at-hand corollaries of showering: warmth, wet, and nudity. Bubblegum decided that perhaps a little meditation was in order. Yes, an empty mind would be just the thing right now. She scooted back onto the mattress until she could cross her legs in front of herself and measured her breathing. After a moment, she let her arms rest limp on her knees instead of holding them in position; they were so heavy. Given dark and quiet, she found it wasn’t so hard to clear her mind after all. Her breath count slipped from four to five to seven. By the time the shower stopped, she was asleep.

 

 

 

Bubblegum woke briefly to the feeling of a blanket being pulled over her.  She stirred and stretched a little without opening her eyes.

"Geez, Bonni," came a soft, fond voice.  "Have you not been sleeping again?"

"'m fine," Bubblegum murmured.  "'m good, 'm ready to go.  Where we going?"

Marcy chuckled.  "Nowhere tonight.  Go back to sleep."

Bubblegum remembered, then, and fought her eyes open.  Everything was dark.  "But Ash," she said.

"It's okay."  Marcy's fingers brushed across her forehead.  "I'm okay now.  I'll keep watch."

Nothing more.

 

 

 

Bubblegum woke to a curtain of black hair tickling her face. She grunted, batted at it, and rolled over. Her cheek found the exact spot on the pillow that featured a puddle of cold drool.

“Gllrgh,” she muttered, lifting her head. “Gross.” She rolled away from the slime spot, onto her back, and opened her eyes, then bit her own tongue trying not to scream.

Marceline floated about two feet directly above Bubblegum, curled on her side on a surface that wasn’t there, hair trailing down, fast asleep.

“Algebraic,” breathed Bubblegum. “Okay. Wow. Been a while since that particular brand of heart attack.” As quietly as she could manage, she slid out from under Marceline and off the bed.  She found her crown and gun on the bedside table and reclaimed both.

Marceline stirred and sighed. She looked peaceful, Bubblegum decided. It would be a shame to disturb her; she deserved to sleep in today. It certainly wasn’t cowardice that had Bubblegum creeping down the ladder without waking her.

The walk back to the Candy Kingdom was long and cold.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Since this is my first fic, I wasn't entirely sure how to navigate the tagging system/what's customary. If anyone has tips about formatting/tagging/etc., or if I've neglected to tag anything I should have, I'd love to hear them.
> 
> Come find me at thebibliophibian.tumblr.com.


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